Readers, more important, in my opinion, than the so-called ‘travel ban’ portion of the Trump Executive Orders held up in our power-hungry court system, is the issue of the President’s power to set the CEILING on refugee admissions for the year.

My contention is that he has the right to set the CEILING and change the CEILING without any Executive Order.

The Refugee Act of 1980 says only that he must “consult” with Congress on an annual determination. If he changes the number throughout the year (the law envisions a wish to increase the number and is silent on the issue of decreasing it) he must notify Congress.

Since the number set annually is a CEILING (not a target), then there would be no need to even announce any lowering of the number during the year, nor would there have been a need to address a procedure for lowering the incoming numbers in the original law. The Dept. of State and Homeland Security would simply just bring in fewer numbers.

The dirty little secret is that for years, the refugee industry has tried to turn the CEILING in to a target, but at least Frelick is honest.

Frelick of Human Rights Watch(a pro refugee organization) knows that this garbage (the Buffalo story mentioned it again) we keep seeing that there is a minimum 50,000 refugees required under the Act is inaccurate, see what he said here.

It’s the media, the contractors, and the bureaucrat holdovers who are busy bluffing the White House by counting on the fact that no one there understands the program and its history!

And, now as for the missing CEILING data…..

I’ve been following the program since 2007 and Presidents have never reached the CEILING in those years. Obama came pretty close several times, but he was under the ceiling—by huge numbers—in two years in particular.

See this chart (below) from Wrapsnetfor 2006-2016. Pay close attention to the columns for CEILING and the ultimate admission numbers. See the gap! It varies from year to year under the CEILING.

In FY11 Obama set the ceiling at 80,000 and came in with 56,424 (a shortfall of 23,576).

In FY12 Obama’s ceiling was 76,000 and he ultimately admitted 58,238 (a shortfall of 17,762).

Did anyone sue President Obama for leaving thousands “stranded in war-torn countries”? No!

There were NO lawsuits and no screams (at least in public!) from the contractors!

Look at this same chart for the end of March 2017 (at that point Wrapsnet still lists the last CEILING set by Obama (110,000) his highest ceiling by far). I discussed it here.

Now here is the chart for the end of April 2017. I discussed it here. See the note! **FY2017 ceiling is currently in litigation.

Today, I decided to have a look at Trump’s numbers for May because of my earlier post today about the contractors getting excited by increasing numbers coming in, but what did I find when I checked this monthly update?

Can you see what is missing?

Incompetence or an effort to obscure the facts?

Did you see it? They have removed the CEILING column arguably the most useful number from this particular data base.

Why? Is it a deliberate attempt to hide facts? Or, just some dumb mistake by an underling at the Refugee Processing Center(aka Wrapsnet)? You decide.

And, one last thing, for a chuckle, note how extraordinarily high the numbers were for October, November, December of FY2017 compared to the previous ten years. Do you think the outgoing Obama Admin. was in a hurry to pour as many refugees in to your towns and cities as they could before getting out of Dodge? You betcha!

WASHINGTON – President Trump’s promise to cut in half the number of refugees coming to America – and therefore Buffalo – has turned into a dream unfulfilled.

Buffalo offers proof of it. State Department figures show the city welcomed 376 new refugees between Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration and last Wednesday. That’s a 32 percent reduction from the 554 who arrived a year before, but nothing close to a 50 percent reduction.

What’s more, 149 of those new arrivals come from Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan or Syria – nations subject to Trump’s travel ban before the federal courts ruled it was unconstitutional.

And now, the city’s refugee resettlement agencies are gearing up for a growing wave of refugees under a new State Department announcement that further undercuts Trump’s promise.

“We had a very busy May, and we will have a very busy June,” said Karen Andolina Scott, executive director of Journey’s End Refugee Services, one of Buffalo’s fourrefugee resettlement agencies.***

Church World Service, the national refugee agency affiliated with Journey’s End, “was able to send us more people than we thought,” Scott added.

[….]

Now Buffalo stands poised to welcome a growing number of refugees in the next few months. That’s because the State Department last month quietly abandoned the weekly refugee admission quotas that had been in place earlier in the year.

[I’m highlighting this (above) because I have readers who still don’t believe this happened.—ed]

Congress fully-funded refugee resettlement for the remainder of FY17 and Trump signed it!

Budgetary constraints previously limited the number of refugees coming to America in the current fiscal year. But a State Department spokesman said the temporary budget bill that Trump signed on May 5, which funds the government through Sept. 30, includes full funding for the nation’s refugee resettlement program.

That returns the annual cap for refugees coming to America the same as the one Obama set: 110,000 for the year ending Sept. 30. [This part is still up in the air, however, a reminder that this number—110,000—is a ceiling not a target!—ed]

Refugee resettlement advocates doubt the nation will receive that number. They said it appears the Department of Homeland Security, which vets prospective refugees, slowed down that process in several countries in wake of Trump’s earlier actions, which in turn could slow refugee arrivals in the United States.

Still, local resettlement agencies expect the pace of new refugee arrivals to grow in the coming months.

Like this:

….And, it has nothing to do with any Trump Administration plans. Other actors have stepped in to begin to make it happen and as the story tells us, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had no comment.

Before critics jump in, it should be none of our business if these families want to put their lives in the hands of Hezbollah, it is not our role (or the UN’s!) to play the papa and tell them where to live and what to do with their lives (which is a large part of the psychology that drives refugee resettlement—the ‘we know what’s good for you’ mentality!).

BEIRUT: Dozens of refugee families returned to Aasal al-Ward in southern Syria after leaving the Lebanese border town of Arsal over the weekend as part of a deal brokered by Hezbollah and Syrian rebel factions.

Photo accompanying Daily Star story.

The Lebanese Army said in a statement that 30 civilian vehicles carrying an estimated 50 families departed from the northern Lebanese town in the early hours of Saturday and a military escort accompanied them until the last military checkpoint.

According to the Army statement, the move was undertaken in response to a “keen interest of the families” to return to their homeland. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV circulated a video Sunday depicting the Syrian families celebrating their return to their hometown.

Local media estimated that 50 families chose to leave Lebanon for Syria Saturday. A total of 500 families are expected to relocate following negotiations earlier this year to establish small safe zones for civilians in the Qalamoun region, brokered by Hezbollah.

A security source in the town of Arsal told The Daily Star Saturday that the return of dozens of displaced families was the result of behind-the-scenes negotiations between Hezbollah and the Syrian regime on one hand, and armed factions present in the area on the other.

[….]

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, had no comment when contacted Sunday evening.